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Jeremy Corbyn's Labouris suffering the worst opinion poll ratings the party has ever experienced in opposition, according to the latest figures released on the first anniversary of his election as leader.

Labour is trailing the Conservatives by an average of 11 points, in the worst result for a leader since modern polling began in the 1950s.

It came as John McDonnell, the shadow chancellor, admitted he and Mr Corbyn needed to "improve" their "act" and vowed to listen to their critics.

Tony Blair enjoyed the best ratings as Labour leader

When Tony Blair reached his first anniversary as leader in 1995, Labour was ahead of the Conservatives by an average of 26 points.

The figures from the Nuffield series of British General Election studies revealed a party leader has never suffered from such poor ratings 12 months into their premiership.

Mr McDonnell told Pienaar's Politics on BBC Radio 5 Live: "I've got to improve my act as well, I recognise that and I want to look at what criticisms there are that have been made about how I operate. Jeremy is exactly the same mental position.

"If Jeremy is re-elected - and I don't count my chickens before they're hatched - if he is what we'll be saying to people is, 'Right, what do you think has hit those poll ratings?' because actually we were virtually level or in advance of the Tories before the coup occurred and let's iron out what those problems are."

It came after a prominent Labour donor was suspended by the party over the weekend after writing a newspaper article in which he appeared to compare Mr Corbyn's allies to Hitler's stormtroopers.

It follows accusations that Mr Corbyn has failed to do enough to tackle abuse and allegations of anti-Semitism within the party.

Jeremy Corbyn during Prime Minister's Questions in the House of CommonsCredit:
PA

Michael Foster told The World This Weekend that Labour was using "badly drawn, widely written rules to purge from the party people that do not toe the hard Left line".

He also stressed he did not use the word "Nazi" and that it been added to the headline of his article in the Mail on Sunday.

Mr McDonnell told the same programme that the way the rules were being enforced breached "natural justice".

But the major donor accused him of being "sly" given that Mr McDonnell had previously called for his suspension.

Last night Mr Corbyn faced criticism after he used a statement on the 15th Anniversary of 9/11 to refer to the "wars and terror" that followed.

Mr Corbyn has previously claimed that 9/11 was "manipulated" to make it look like Osama Bin Laden was responsible to allow the West to go to war in Afghanistan.

Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell at the Labour Party ConferenceCredit:
Heathcliff O'Malley

Yesterday he said: “My thoughts are with those whose lives were shattered 15 years ago in the horrific atrocity on 9/11 - and in the wars and terror unleashed across the globe in its aftermath.”

Mr Corbyn's office was also forced to deny claims by one of his former advisers that a Hebrew phrase was removed from his Passover message in case it made him sound "Zionist".